Botanic gardens in London reveal new Australian species

PETER CAVE: Botanists from the world-renowned Kew Botanical Gardens in London have announced that they've discovered two new species of eucalypt trees in Australia.

They are among 250 new plant and fungus species unveiled by the gardens as it celebrates its 250th anniversary.

The smallest of the new species is a type of wood rotting fungus that scientists found in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

Meredith Griffiths reports.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: The Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in the London suburb of Kew is responsible for the world's largest collection of living plants and that collection now includes some new Australian additions.

The garden's director, professor Stephen Hopper, has found two new species of eucalyptus tree in south west Australia.

He was the right man for the job according to Dr Tim Entwisle from the Botanic Gardens in Sydney.

TIM ENTWISLE: Steve Hopper's an expert on eucalypts and particularly on West Australian eucalypts and he's had experience there before he went to Kew and in fact he's the first director of Kew to come from Australia - an Australian. So he took that expertise with him.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Professor Hopper and his colleague Luke Sweedman only found a few hundred plants of each of the two new eucalypts.

The first is a dwarf, forming a low growing mallee about one metre high. It's got a special underground root stock which allows it to regrow after bushfires.

The second new species isn't fire resistant in the same way so the botanists from Kew have suggested perhaps a better way to ensure their survival is to start marketing them as ornamental plants.

Scientists have already identified about 700 species of eucalyptus but Tim Entwisle from the Sydney Botanic Gardens says there could still be more out there.

TIM ENTWISLE: Sometimes they are quite distinct and a new plant will have something that you and I would say oh look that's a new thing, that looks different. Other times there are subtleties and we might have missed the new species and it might be subtleties in DNA that tells it's new. But when we go and look at the plant, we look at where it grows, we do find out it has a different biology, it's got different sort of life processes.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: The new trees were among 250 new species unveiled by Kew Gardens to celebrate its 250th anniversary.

The smallest species was a type of wood rotting fungus less than a millimetre thick. Scientists from Britain and Australia first collected specimens in the Kimberley in 1988.

Dr Entwisle says it's no surprise it took so long to describe the new species.

TIM ENTWISLE: One of the reasons we don't hear about new species a lot is it can take a lot of time from the time you find the plant or collect the plant to studying it in the laboratory, to extracting it's DNA, to comparing it to other specimens around the world because you've got to make sure there's not one already described. That process can take many, many years and if you do a field trip to a place like the Kimberley, you're going to find hundreds of new things, it's going to take quite a long time.

There aren't many taxonomists in Australia. There is a real shortage of experts at the moment and that's around the world as well.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: The other new discoveries unveiled at Kew overnight include giant rainforest trees, an ancient aquatic plant and new types of wild coffee plants.